Repeat Offender

On September 20th, Apple released Sierra, the new version of OS X (now renamed macOS). Despite the fact that beta versions of Sierra have been available for months, AKAI has failed to produce EIE Pro drivers for macOS Sierra and have remained silent on when or if drivers will be made. So we (EIE Pro owners) have to wait on updating our production machines.

Like any dutiful producer, I’m very conservative when it comes to upgrading my OS. But this time, there are many features I’m excited for. SIRI on the Mac, messages, and other improvements that work with iOS 10. Outdated hardware drivers keep me from updating either operating system, as they are so tightly integrated.

This has happened with every new Apple release since the EIE Pro came out and I’m beginning to think that Sierra is the last supported release (if they release EIE Pro drivers for Sierra at all). I would appreciate warning if that’s the case, but judging by their nonexistent customer support, I don’t expect it.

I haven’t replaced this box like I hoped, but that’s now a priority. It’s a shame, because I really like the EIE Pro. I’m still looking for an appropriate replacement. I’m leaning toward a Focusrite box (as I mentioned in a previous post), but I’ve read they have their own issues. If you have a suggestion, let me know in the comments.

I feel that if a company isn’t interested in supporting it’s computer connected products with updated drivers, it should “set them free” by making them open source so the community can maintain them. But I fear that’s not AKAI’s style. They have our money and now they don’t care.

As always, you can find the driver page where they will be available, if they become available, here.

Another OS X update has come out and once again AKAI has failed to deliver EIE Pro drivers. I’ve gone through this not just once, but twice. Luckily, Yosemite had a workaround that I was able to get working, but I’ve learned my lesson when it comes to AKAI and OS X drivers. I haven’t yet updated to OS X 10.11 El Capitan.

This is the last time I’m going through this. I don’t expect them to support this device on the next OS X update. I’m selling it and getting something else. Probably a Focusrite box as they seem to have their shit together.

If you have an EIE Pro, I suggest you do the same. I’m not buying another AKAI product that interfaces with a computer. I don’t trust them to support it and I don’t think that will change until we boycott them. Their products are fine, but their driver support record is unacceptable. They need to either a) have drivers ready before OS updates, b) only make class compliant devices, or c) open source the drivers so the community can support AKAI devices when they no longer care to.

Your Logic Pro X Projects Are a Mess!

You’ve just finished your masterpiece. It’s been bounced to a high resolution master, it’s been converted to MP3 or MP4, and you’ve released it to the world. Eventually, the musical high wears off, and you are left with a gigantic project file. It’s full of unused takes, bits and pieces of ideas, samples that didn’t make the cut, and tracks that don’t do anything. All of it is taking up precious disk space.

There are those (digital pack rats, essentially) that will tell you to throw the whole mess onto an external drive and forget about it. That’s one solution, but what happens in 5 years when you open the project and you are missing half the plugins and can’t make heads or tails of what you did?

Where to Start?

I’d like to start this tutorial by saying you need to backup your project. Right now. Make a copy of it as it currently is. Do not perform these steps until you have a backup copy.

Now that you have your backup, open your project and look at your tracks. Give each track a useful name. Something like “Bass” or “First Guitar” is probably not descriptive enough, but it’s better than nothing. You should try to get in the habit doing this as you work on the project. If you do, all your audio files will be appropriately named, which makes sorting outtakes easier.

Any tracks that were used temporarily to hold a bounce or a reference track should be deleted. Any regions that didn’t make the cut should be deleted. You may also want to join all your regions (to prevent accidentally nudging them), bounce out each track as a stem, or bounce track groups down to one track. Keep pruning until the project is simple enough to navigate.

If you can’t decide wether a track stays or goes, keep it. But be sure to label the track “Outtake” or “Unused”.

Did you use any plugins? Now would be a good time to bounce any soft synths to file. The same goes for any tracks with 3rd party effects on them. Too many times I’ve opened a project only to find that I didn’t have the plugin anymore. Label these tracks with “Bounce”, “Wet” or some other tag that differentiates them.

Now sort your tracks. You can group things together by instrument, hide tracks (like the wet bounces), color code them, anything that will help you recall how the mix was set up in the future.

Once your tracks are sorted, zoom the view all the way out. I like to do this so I can see the whole piece at once and get a grasp of what I was doing when I next open it.

Now, lets consolidate the project. This will ensure that the project file contains a copy of all your imported samples and files. Now you can share it with a friend or open it up on another machine without complaints.

Go to the “File” menu item.

Go to the “Project Management” section and select “Consolidate…”

Check all the boxes that apply and click “OK”.

Ditching the Leftovers

If you’ve completed the previous steps, you can probably just save the project and throw it on to a hard drive. But if you are like me, knowing a project is taking up 2-3 times as much space as it needs to drives you nuts.

Your project no doubt has many, many files that didn’t get used or only partially used. If you don’t want them any more, Logic has a great way to help. This removes all reference to the unused files from the project.

Open the media browser and click the “Project” tab.

Next, click the edit tab.

Click “Select Unused”. This will select all the files that weren’t used in the project.

Hit the delete key.

The last thing you’ll want to do is “clean up” the project. This physically deletes the unused files from the project. Do not perform this if you want to retain your unused files. Especially if you didn’t perform a back up like I suggested.

Go to the “File” menu item.

Go to the “Project Management” section and select “Clean Up…”

Check all the boxes that apply and click “OK”.

Your project is now free of any extraneous data and is ready for archiving. Save it one last time and put it somewhere safe. And make a back up. If your files aren’t in at least two places at once, they aren’t safe.

The next time you open your project, thank your past self for being so thoughtful!

From Austin to Los Angeles

Hello, from sunny Van Nuys, California! I moved from Austin to Los Angeles on June 2nd and I couldn’t be happier.

Things change. That’s just how it is. When I moved to Austin in 2002, things were very different. Austin was a much smaller town and I relished the slower pace after spending my life in hectic Los Angeles.

While I love Austin and will always love it, the reasons for being there slowly became fewer and fewer. The rents went up, the small businesses went down, and and Austin gained 2 million people. Slowly, but surely, the Austin I moved to became “LA Junior” without all the perks of actual LA.

So when an apartment in Van Nuys came up that was comparable in rent to Austin, we jumped at the chance to move. We packed our stuff into a U-Haul, loaded our car on a trailer, and made the 1400 mile trek back home.

To pay the bills, I now perform technical services in addition to audio services. Because let’s face it, more people need their laptop repaired than they need a song recorded. I enjoy the work much more than my old office job and it gives me more time to create. In fact the city in general and our neighborhood in particular has breathed new life into me, creatively speaking. I’m inspired, I’m productive, and I have a plan for the future.

One of those plans is the formation of my first business. I won’t go into details just yet, but it will be a partnership with my special lady friend and will combine all our talents into one company. We’re both very excited about the future.

Check back soon for more news. This site is part of my plans and I intend to focus more on it. Happy creating!

“Too Punk Rock for Mendocino”

Last week, I teamed up with my good friend Russ Carney to produce to radio spot for KPFN in Laytonville, CA. They aired several times and caused quite a stir. As Russ likes to say, we were “too punk rock for Mendocino”.

This piece was written and performed by Russ. I recorded, edited and produced it.

This second piece was written by Russ and performed by both Russ and his wife Nicky. Again, I performed all recording, editing, and production.

I Love Ableton Live

I posted a straight forward tutorial on making drum pattern clips in Ableton Live 9 on YouTube. This is a simple process, but people still find it a bit tricky. I’ll be posting more tutorials like this in the future, so subscribe if you’d like to see more.

It All Started With a Broken Bass Amp

I think it’s safe to say that I’m fairly handy with a soldering iron. No, I’m not designing circuits from scratch and turning the world of audio hardware on it’s ear, but I can follow instructions, put parts on a board, and troubleshoot things when it doesn’t work right. I’m not only competent at it, I actually enjoy it.

Repairing things is a different matter. I’ve never replaced a burnt out or malfunctioning part on a device’s circuit board. Strangely, I’d never made the connection between building a device and repairing one. It’s really the same thing, but potentially easier as you may only need to replace one part to get the device working again.

I was forced to consider this connection on a trip to the thrift store. I was scoping the electronics section, as I always do, and found an Acoustic B20 bass amp. I was priced at $19.99, but marked “as-is” which we all know is a euphemism for “broken”. The screws had been taken out of the head, so I pulled the head out and inspected it. The fuse was obviously blown, but the rest of the board looked OK. It was a long shot, but maybe the fuse just needed to be replaced. A quick Google and a few clicks later informed me that Acoustic released a batch of these amps with faulty capacitors. Replacing the capacitors would fix it. A Craigslist ad showed that these amps go for $90-$100 so $19.99 was a steal. I decided to roll the dice and get it.

Down to Business

The first thing I needed to do was locate parts. Since I usually build from kits, I don’t have a lot of extra parts lying around to to use in a repair. So I had to find a parts store. Well guess what? It’s 2014 and not many people do through-hole electronics anymore. Austin is a pretty creative place, but the neighborhood parts store is gone and Fry’s electronics is the only game in town. My other option is to order from the internet, which can be cheap, but shipping cost and ordering in such a small quantity would make the price difference about the same. So I went to Fry’s and bought a box of 315mA 250v slo-blow fuses and a 2200uF @ 25v capacitor. Actually, I got a 2200uF capacitor, but at 35v (which I’ve been assured is fine). They didn’t have the 25v one.

Back at the workbench, armed with my new parts, I pulled the head from the amp and got to work. The first thing I did, and I recommend this to anyone doing any sort of repair work or trouble shooting, was take a picture of the current state. This is so if I hit any snags I can reverse my work. I installed a new fuse and powered it up. The light came on! And then the light went out and the fuse blew. Looking closer at the two capacitors on the board, I noticed they looked a little bulged and oozing (not a healthy part). The next step was to take the board out of the head and remove those busted caps.

As usual, there are millions of little screws, nuts, and washers. I put them all in a little cup and after a little fumbling, I was able to flip the board over and desolder the caps. Amazingly, the solder was really tough to melt. When it was melted, I removed the caps and installed the new ones. They were a bit bigger than the old ones, but bit of a bending and they were soldered in.

I installed another fuse and powered it on. The light came on and stayed on. Encouraging! So I plugged in a bass and nothing happened. I was less encouraged. Before I freaked out, I plugged in a pair of headphones to see what would happen. I could hear the bass in the headphones! So maybe I had a blown speaker.

I took off the grill (which is nicely held in place with strong velcro) and examined the speaker. It looked pristine. At least it wasn’t blown. I decided to check the connection on the back. The wire was completely disconnected. Aha! So I plugged it in, powered it up, and my bass was booming (probably to the annoyance of my neighbor).

My total outlay? $30, but I’m going to count $10 of that as repair education tuition. I learned that disassembly and reassembly are the hardest part of repairs. I learned that it pays to have cheaply acquired common parts on hand. I learned that I can do this. I learned that it’s not magic, but I do feel like a wizard.

Still No OS X Mavericks Driver for the EIE Pro

Last year, when Apple released OS X Mountain Lion, I posted about it. It took 2 weeks for them to get compatible drivers released. This year, with the release of OS X Mavericks, they’ve done it again.

Mavericks was released on October 22. As of this writing, I’ve been waiting 49 days for a driver. Of course, I learned my lesson from last year. I didn’t upgrade to Mavericks and have been waiting for an official driver.

A few weeks after Mavericks was released, a user on the GetSatisfaction forum figured out a work-around to install the driver in Mavericks. Apparently the problem is an issue with the package signature. Now I’m not a software developer, but from what I’ve heard this isn’t a huge problem to fix. As it is, the OS won’t install it.

So why the delay? Akai is short on answers. But one of the forum posters has done some digging and all the brands owned by their parent company InMusic (Akai, M-Audio, Alesis, Alto Professional, Ion, MixMeister, Numark, and Sonivox) are suffering driver lags. There’s only one customer support rep dealing with all the people complaining on the forum and he has no new information. They’ve left him to take the heat. The best he was able to do was refer people to the (unofficial and unsupported) work-around. The smart money says that all of InMusic’s departments are cheaply outsourced and strained.

Well, I got tired of waiting and decided to risk the work around. I uninstalled the driver, backed up, upgraded to Mavericks, and performed the driver work-around. It mostly works. I can monitor and record with the interface and the OS sees my external drives on the USB hub. However, the sound card can’t be used as a system sound output device. This is OK for me, but some may not like that compromise.

If you can live without system sound functionality, you can upgrade to Mavericks and use the workaround below.

One Track Mind

When I record, I tend to do one thing at a time. Most of the instruments I’ve owned have either one output in mono or two outputs in stereo, and I’m used to that. I don’t have many stereo effects, so I’ve largely worked with mono sources that can be passed through mono effects pedals or have stereo effects applied later in the DAW. This has served me well for guitars, synths, and drum machines for most of my life. Combine this with a lot of time spent working on music alone playing one part at a time, and it becomes a habit.

I say all this to explain why it’s taken me so long to explore the multitimbral features of my Nord Lead 2. Today, I dug into its routing options, and while it has a pretty simple system, there are a few quirks that might stymie someone attempting it for the first time.

Timbrality? What’s that?

If you spend enough time playing with musical instruments, eventually you’ll run into the concept of “timbre”. An instrument’s timbre (pronounced “tam-bur”) can best be compared to a person’s voice. Everyone has a different voice, and these differences come from the variations in human physique. The size of a person’s head, tongue, mouth, lips, and chest all contribute to the overall sound of a person’s voice. The same can be said of instruments. It’s what makes a piano sound different from a guitar. They have different shapes, are constructed from different materials, and have different methods of producing sound, so they sound different when playing the same pitch. Some instruments, like an electric guitar, have switches and knobs that can change its timber (guitarists like to call it “tone”) by changing the configuration of the guitar’s pickups and EQ, but it only has one timbre at any given time. If you want different guitar sounds, you have to record them separately, one at a time.

But what about synths? As mentioned earlier, for much of the synthesizer’s history, synths produced one sound at a time, through one output, one note at a time, in mono. They had knobs, sliders, and switches giving them near infinite flexibility of timbre (and these options are what make one synth sound different from another synth), but it was still only one timbre at a time. Eventually synths allowed the player to switch timbres (synthesists like to call them “patches” or “presets”) with a push of a button and save favorite timbres for later. However, the old limitation of one timbre at a time remained.

Multi-timbral synths, like the Sequential Circuits Six-Trak and the Casio CZ-101 added the ability to make more than one sound at a time. When these synths were hooked up to a MIDI sequencer, a keyboardist could play organ, bass, and lead synth all from one physical unit. The cheaper units used only a pair of stereo outputs, but more professional models featured separate mono outputs for each sound, so you could mix them or add effects separately. You could have a dry, compressed bass sound on one output and a reverb-drenched pad on another output. A whole song could be performed from one synth. This was a big improvement.

Setting Up the Nord Lead 2

The Nord Lead 2 is a multi-timbral synthesizer like the Six-Trak or CZ-101. It has four outputs and four parts (called “slots” on the casing). You can assign a different patch to each slot and route the slots in a number of different ways. The synth has no built in effects, but supports a sort of faux stereo as well as mono output.

When setting up the Nord Lead 2, it’s easy to miss one small detail: when you use only one cable, plugged into output “A”, you will hear slot “A” and slot “B”. They may be layered or separated (when you switch the active slot), but they will both come out of output “A”. If you plug the cable into output “B”, you may only hear slot “B” or slot “A” depending on other settings. If you want slot “A” to come out of output “A” and slot “B” to come out of output “B”, you must use two cables: one in output “A” and another in output “B”. I was baffled by this until I plugged 2 cables in, and now the slots are perfectly separated.

Clavia cleverly put a little map to the far right of the controls, so you don’t have to dig out the manual to set output routing. We have 8 different modes available for routing:

Mono/unison stereo to outputs “A” and “B” (mode “1Ab” on the LCD)

Mono to outputs “A” and “B” (mode “2Ab” on the LCD)

Alternating to outputs “A” and “B” (mode “3Ab” on the LCD)

Slot “A” to output “A” and slot “B” to output “B” (mode “4Ab” on the LCD)

Mono/unison stereo to outputs “C” and “D” (mode “1cd” on the LCD)

Mono to outputs “C” and “D” (mode “2cd” on the LCD)

Alternating to outputs “C” and “D” (mode “3cd” on the LCD)

Slot “C” to output “C” and slot “D” to output “D” (mode “4cd” on the LCD)

As you may have noticed, the first four modes are duplicated for outputs “C” and “D”. There is a ninth mode (“-cd” on the LCD) that sets outputs to the exact same routing as outputs “A” and “B”.

To change the output mode, hold the “Shift” button, and press the “Out Mode” button (located under the LCD display). The display should show the current setting such as “4.Ab”. You can then press the up and down buttons to change the output mode. Press the “Out Mode” button (without holding the “Shift” button) to change the “C” and “D” settings. Press the “Shift” button again to exit the menu.

The Output Modes

The first output mode is “1Ab”. This is the default output mode. All sounds from slots “A” and “B” are sent to outputs “A” and “B”. The sounds will be mono or stereo depending on the patches assigned to slots “A” and “B”. No matter what sound you assign to the slots, they will come out of outputs “A” and “B” with the intended mono or stereo image. If both slots are set to a mono sound, the output will be mono (equal volume over both outputs). If at least one of the slots has a stereo patch, the output will be stereo.

This second output mode is “2Ab”. This mode sends equal levels for slots “A” and “B” at the two “A” and “B” outputs. Even though the sounds are coming out of the 2 outputs, the levels are the same and there is no discernible stereo image.

The third output mode is “3Ab”. This is the forced stereo mode. The sounds from slots “A” and “B” are sent to outputs “A” and “B” in alternating fashion, creating a faux stereo image. All sounds, be they mono or stereo, will have a stereo image. This is the most stylistically drastic mode and entirely subject to taste.

The fourth output mode is “4Ab”. This is the forced mono mode. The sound assigned to slot “A” will come out of output “A”, and the sound of slot “B” will come out of output “B”. Sounds will be in mono, no matter what their settings. You can process each sound individually over separate mixer channels. This is useful for multi-timbral performances where you want effects on some of your sounds, but not all of them. I find it especially useful with using the Nord Lead 2 as a drum module. You can put a kick, snare, closed hi hat, and open hi-hat on the 4 slots, and effect each drum differently (such as a compressor on the kick and a delay on the snare).

The “C” and “D” outputs and slots have exactly the same routing options, with the addition of the “-cd” mode. This mode copies the behavior of slots “A” and “B”. For instance, if you have “A” and “B” set to “3Ab” and “C” and “D” set to “-cd”, all 4 slots will come out of outputs “A” and “B” with forced stereo sound. No sound will come out of outputs “C” and “D”.

To Learn New Things

I’ve found one of the most effective methods of G.A.S. (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) relief is to get more in-depth with the gear you already have. Learning a piece of gear inside and out inspires creativity and can break a stubborn run of musician’s block. In the case of the Nord Lead 2’s output options, I’m now inspired to use it as a percussion instrument. So get in deep with your gear, you never know what you might find.

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About

Ben Jarvis is a Los Angeles based independent musician, producer, and recording engineer. Since childhood, Ben has experimented with numerous musical instruments and a wide variety of recording techniques.